Yesterday, Galena Biopharma Inc (NASDAQ:GALE) released third-quarter earnings and offered a clinical progress update on its pipeline. In reaction, Maxim analyst Jason McCarthy reiterates a Buy rating on GALE with a price target of $1.00, which represents a 415% increase from where the shares last closed.

For the analyst, the best news is that the biotech firm will be advancing Gale-401, a controlled release formulation of anagrelide for the treatment of essential thrombocythemia (ET), to a pivotal Phase III trial. Upon the end of Phase II meeting with the FDA coupled with the final Phase III study design, the program could very well commence come second quarter of 2017. Additionally, the firm continues to advance GALE 301 and 302 in endometrial and/or ovarian cancers.

McCarthy notes, “Galena conducted an extensive review of the interim data from PRESENT, which demonstrated that the control group had fewer cancer recurrences than expected. This may have been due in part to improvements in standard of care over the course of the study. Of note, tumor lesions in NeuVax treated patients, but not control treated patients, were inflamed with T cells. It is possible that these lesions would have never progressed to clinical tumors and maybe timing of the analysis was an issue.”

“In our view, the interim data points to NeuVax driving anti-tumor responses, and we believe this is what collaborators conducting combination studies with Herceptin see as well and why those studies are continuing. While we are excited to see GALE-401 going to a pivotal study and other pipeline programs continuing to advance, we want to point out that NeuVax still has legs,” McCarthy concludes.

GALE posted a net loss of $6.9 million, or a loss of $0.03 per share and closed the quarter with $24.5 million in cash and equivalents.

As usual, we recommend taking analyst notes with a grain of salt. According to TipRanks, analyst Jason McCarthy is ranked #4,061 out of 4,205 analysts. McCarthy has a 24% success rate and faces a loss of 15.6% in his yearly returns. When suggesting GALE, McCarthy forfeits 68.0% in average profits on the stock.

TipRanks analytics indicate GALE as a Buy. Out of two analysts polled by TipRanks, two are bullish on Galena stock. With a return potential of 650%, the stock’s consensus target price stands at $1.50.